A Partial History of Nashville’s Take One Magazine
By Thom W. King
From August 1977 to September 1979, I published a magazine called Take One here in Nashville. What started as a 12-page black and white monthly tabloid with a circulation of 5,000 copies grew (partially with the help of a New York investor who later went bankrupt and took my magazine with him) into a weekly, colorful magazine with a circulation of 50,000 copies per issue.
During that time, we published over a million copies of what we feel was a lively, entertaining magazine devoted to music, art, politics, food, and lifestyles, plus whatever else we could cram in before deadline. Over 400 writers, artists, photographers, poets and other romantic souls contributed to the creation, nurturing, and survival of the publication during its brief life.
We did features and inside stories on such “related” subjects as cockfighting, the KKK, nuclear power, tourist traps, local TV news, dream cars, health food hazards, toxic waste, Tennessee cowboys, Mensa, passenger trains, jogging, holiday greed, Jimmy Carter, Nashville’s future, present, and past, neighborhood preservation, playgrounds in jeopardy, male prostitutes, gay rights in pre-AIDS America, Death Row…oh yeah, and we also interviewed rock stars, featured outrageous cartoons, got sued by large corporations we reported on (and thankfully we never lost a case, regardless of how big the boys we pissed off were). And we had huge quantities of fun and heartbreak. At the same time.
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| Take One publisher Thom King on Second Avenue North, 1978 |
Tell us some stories, Old Man! Okee-dokey, little ones. Hang on! We lost female reporters to rock stars, including one who went out to Elliston Place for a concert review and called in two weeks later from Detroit, still high, in lust, and, unfortunately, without any money to get home. Her blonde hair and 18 (maybe) year old body had lost its appeal mid-tour of a major British legend.
We had a dead body show up on the back door of our five-story Second Avenue warehouse (30,000 square feet of space we baby-sat for $125 a month while the developer was putting his renovation together). We saw a dozen police cars roar up in the night, take the body away, and then never saw anything about it in the daily papers…something about stealing a mail truck?
We went to record label parties ‘en mass’ and drank everything behind the bar (first to come, last to leave, got no money but boy can we write…what a motto for a magazine staff). We were a blitz of hungry, thirsty wolves and we would attack without thought. Woe be the unsuspecting Music Row public relations beginner who innocently sent a little invitation to our offices only to see ‘The Sucking Heard of Zombie Journalists’ wipe out their entire party.
We had fights with the public, with ourselves, sometimes with total strangers. We worked with geniuses and total idiots, and I’m still not sure which column was which. We earned about ten cents per hour, and religiously fought for the right to keep on working. We sold our blood and plasma to keep things going. We unknowingly bought a typesetter that turned out to be hot (what are the odds of that?). We saw new artists become superstars, we saw writers become millionaires (Yo, Don Schlitz, My Man!), we saw former staff members become published national writers (Yo, Bobby Millard, My Man!), we saw skinny, unknown struggling country singers running naked around the hot tub and now we see them rich and fat on The Today Show (Yo, well, never mind…too many people might recognize your cute little butt and be shocked with the national image you now present to millions).
Talent was literally in every nook and cranny. Even our typesetter for a few weeks was one Kathy Mattea, who is now hooter than the majority of Nashville legends. I was in awe of her talent even then, but the fact that she could and would typeset for minimum wage or so was even more awesome. Hey, life was passionate. Every time an issue finally came rolling off those assorted presses, it was a religious experience. We changed printers every time they increased their prices…so, we were schlepping this magazine all over Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama for any place with a half-million-dollar printing press, of which there were a surprising bunch, even in places like Ardmore AL, Bowling Green KY, and Franklin TN.
It was like giving birth to the biggest, meanest, stubbornest, and often ugliest monster in creation. And we did it 28 times. And every time was harder than the time before. And we bled like hell. Got drunk. Got laid. Got sick. Got up. And then we started all over again. Great life! Over the two years, I spent all my money, all my friends’ money, all my family’s money, in fact well over $100,000. And all I was really trying to do was get into a few concerts for free and pick up some promo records. Was it worth it? Does a spinal tap hurt?
I became an inventor, and presently own a plastics manufacturing company. My products are used internationally and even locally, by banks, hospitals, restaurants, even such recording artists as Randy Travis, Gary Morris, Sawyer Brown, and, yes, Kathy Mattea, thought she probably doesn’t know her former friend makes them for her. I’ve developed a summer fad for students worldwide, a line of fashion earrings for co-eds, and other assorted goodies to make money. And last week, after six months of complete and total agony from literally crippling back pain, I had surgery for a ruptured disc that was paralyzing me.
And you know what? While I was in the hospital bed, actually not knowing whether I would ever walk again, the things I thought about the most were putting out a stupid magazine. I’m serious. Those were the days! Best to all the folks at The Metro. Long May You Reign!
Written for the fifth anniversary of The Metro magazine, August 1990
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